Master, The

“A bold, challenging, brilliantly acted drama that is a must for serious audiences.”~Hollywood Reporter

Aroview: Paul Thomas Anderson directs this mercurial period drama of a disaffected war veteran who falls under the spell of the charismatic leader of a cult.

Although fascinating for its overt allusions to the founding of Scientology, the narrative posits neither a critique nor a defense of L. Ron Hubbard’s bizarre faith, but conversely, a vast and open-ended portrait of antisocial characters searching for meaning and direction in the unsettled years following World War II. Anchored by electrifying performances – Phoenix and Hoffman, in particular, are worth singling out as acting opposites who somehow attract – the film similarly embraces a push-pull magnetism through its strange, elusive rhythms and uncanny sense of the past, which evokes many of the great American character studies of the ’70s.

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